Carnegie Mellon University | Soft & Stretchable Electronics with Liquid Metal

Carmel Majidi
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Over the past decade, there’s been tremendous advancements in soft and highly stretchable circuitry for use in epidermal electronics for health monitoring, wearable computing, and soft robotics. As these technologies continue to improve, there is increasing interest in new material architectures that allow for manufacturing scale-up, printability over large areas, and robust interfacing with surface-mounted microelectronics. One promising approach is to use metal alloys like eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) that are liquid at room temperature and which can be incorporated as microfluidic inclusions within a soft elastomer substrate. As the surrounding elastomers stretches, the fluidic inclusions can elongate and maintain electrical connectivity. Moreover because of their high electrical conductivity, EGaIn can support digital circuit functionality and potentially replace the rigid metallic interconnects that are used in current circuit boards. In this talk, I will present several approaches for using EGaIn as electrical interconnects and conductive inks for stretchable electronics. This includes efforts to create circuits composed of microfluidic channels of liquid metal that directly interface with the pins of packaged microelectronic chips. I will also present recent efforts to combine EGaIn and soft elastomers to create composite materials composed of percolating networks of microscale EGaIn droplets (along with other metallic particles) within a soft elastomer matrix. Soft polymers blended with liquid metal exhibit unique combinations of high electrical or thermal conductivity, high stretchability, and low elastic stiffness. In particular, I will show how these composites can be formulated to function as printable conductive inks and thermal interface materials. Applications include soft printed circuits that maintain stable electrical resistance under strain, elastic transducers capable of sensing and actuation, and thermal interface materials for high performance computing.
Bio: Carmel Majidi is the Clarence H. Adamson Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Soft Machines Lab. His research group develops novel material architectures that allow machines and electronics to be soft, elastically deformable, and biomechanically compatible. This includes research with liquid metal and shape memory materials for creating “artificial” skin, nervous tissue, and muscle for applications in soft robotics and wearable computing. Prof. Majidi has received Young Investigator awards from DARPA, ONR, AFOSR, and NASA, is an author on greater than 200 journal publications, has 28 issued patents, and is co-founder of several spin-off companies.